Great Australian Flood Stories

Introduction

A long and terrible history

Flooding is a serious problem in this country; Australia’s flood history speaks for itself. Floods occur in coastal regions due to storm surge and river outflow, along both sides of the Great Dividing Range from riverine flooding, along all major escarpments and in all catchments. Even slow-moving and widespread riverine flooding has dramatic effects on farmland and infrastructure and, while farmers welcome the regular water and silt deposits, flooding also causes great personal and economic hardship.

Though floods described and recorded before the last hundred or so years were undoubtedly dramatic and occasionally catastrophic, the twentieth century has seen some of the worst and most widespread flooding in Australia’s European history.

The so-called La Niña years of 1916–17, 1954 through 1956, 1973 through 1975 and 2010–2011 featured some of the worst and most widespread flooding ever recorded. A feature of the climate pattern during the La Niña years is the widespread and prolonged rainfall that soaks catchment areas.

Australia’s whole eastern seaboard is at risk of storm surge, flash flooding and riverine flooding. Particularly intense rainfall occurs during weather systems known as ‘east-cost lows’, when water is apparently pulled out of the Pacific Ocean and dumped over coastal areas. These derive much of their energy from the warm waters of the Tasman or Coral Seas, which also provide moisture for rain that can be torrential.

In August 1986, an east-coast low was responsible for Sydney’s heaviest recorded daily rainfall. That winter had been the driest in almost a century. But early on Monday 4 August light rain began to fall. It became heavier overnight and heavier still next morning. Between midday and three in the afternoon on Wednesday it reached its peak, when 100 millimetres cascaded down. Rain continued throughout the evening, finally easing by about 2am on the Thursday. The twenty-four-hour rainfall total to 9am on the Wednesday was a record 327.6 millimetres: even in the western suburbs, which are normally drier, the totals exceeded 250 millimetres.

The torrential rains created chaos. Motorists abandoned their cars, bus services were severely disrupted and flooded tunnels caused trains to grind to a halt. Faced with difficulties and danger in getting home, many people stayed in the city. In the western suburbs, creeks rose rapidly, flooding houses. There were six deaths, and in one case the floods tore two young children from their father’s arms.

The rain eased in Sydney, but then shifted to the southern escarpment of the Blue Mountains. The Coxs and Grose rivers had their largest floods on record; and heavy rains extended south to the Illawarra escarpment west of Wollongong.

Intense rain can persist over an area for several hours, especially where the topography serves to ‘anchor’ storms. This is what happened in the Illawarra escarpment on 18 February 1984. More than 800 millimetres fell on the escarpment in twenty-four hours — the heaviest falls registered in Australia outside the tropics or subtropics. As the water flowed from the escarpment it swept across farmland and the Princes Highway and through parts of the suburb of Dapto. Water overturned cars and damaged houses, and 600 people had to be evacuated. Remarkably, nobody was killed.

This type of weather, caused by low-pressure systems, had caused chaos on the eastern side of the continent before. In June 1952 a low-pressure system developed and intensified east of Bass Strait. Tanybryn in Victoria’s Otway Ranges registered 587 millimetres in three days. The surge of water down narrow and steeply sloping river valleys washed away parts of the Great Ocean Road, isolating Apollo Bay and flooding businesses in Geelong. Flooding in the surf town of Barwon Heads left hundreds homeless.

The same system generated vast amounts of rain in eastern Victoria and southeastern New South Wales, causing major flooding on every river in Gippsland and adjacent southern coastal New South Wales. In Walhalla, an old gold mining town in a narrow valley, disaster struck as an avalanche of water, rocks, silt and logs swept over the town. Residents barely had time to escape: their town was covered in more than a metre of debris. (There are eerie parallels with the flood damage at Grantham in Queensland in 2011.) Meanwhile in New South Wales the town of Forbes became three islands, isolated by the rising of the Lachlan River, and there were two metres of water in the Commercial Hotel. Further southeast in Wagga Wagga, 1200 people were evacuated when the Murrumbidgee rose; and forty homes were flooded in Narrandera some 100 kilometres further northwest.

No state is immune from flooding and floods can occur in any month of the year. In 1929, Tasmania had what is known as ‘the flood year’. Heavy rainfall occurred throughout Derby in the north east, Ulverstone in the north west, and Launceston in the north. Gale force winds destroyed roads and buildings and damaged farmland, causing flooding and stock losses as far south as Hobart and New Norfolk.

This resulted in the only fatal dam failure in Australia’s history. According to The Companion to Tasmanian History, after the heavy rains in 1929

The once prosperous tin mining centre of Derby was practically wiped out when the Cascade Dam {containing 188 million gallons of water} burst on 5 April and flooded the Briseis Tin Mine. Fourteen lives were lost in the only dam burst in Australia’s history to have taken human life. Houses were crushed like matchsticks as a twelve-foot wave of water swept through the town. A ten-ton granite boulder which had travelled two miles was among the mountain of debris left in its wake. The influx of water caused the Ringarooma River above Derby to run uphill for nearly six hours … In Launceston the post office bells rang out in the early morning to warn residents of Inveresk and Invermay to evacuate their homes immediately. Volunteers in boats transported thousands of refugees to the shelter of the Albert Hall. All this occurred in pitch darkness, as power supplies to the city were cut off when the Duck Reach power station was washed away.

Widespread and extreme flooding also occurred throughout Tasmania in 1960, with the Macquarie, Elizabeth, Lake and Liffey rivers particularly affected. Part of the Lake Highway bridge was carried away when the river rose one metre in thirty minutes. The Macquarie Plains–New Norfolk area saw the greatest damage, with several people being rescued from rooftops, twelve houses destroyed and an estimated 650 made homeless. Hobart sustained record losses estimated at millions of dollars as the Hobart Rivulet flooded: water ran knee-deep in Liverpool Street, and the army was called out to help in the rescue.

Flooding is comparatively common in the northwest of Western Australia, due to the wet-season rains occasionally accompanied by cyclones. However, as the area is sparsely populated, there has not so far been a great deal of threat to life or damage to the economy. This is likely to change as the mining industry grows and money returns to the pastoral and tourism industries.

Perth has not often suffered heavy rain and flooding, especially in recent years. But it is after all on the Swan River and therefore cannot be immune. The city suffered major floods in 1926, 1945 and 1963: in July 2001 it received 99 millimetres in a day, not a large amount by Australia’s experience, but enough to cause serious problems. Perhaps the risk is made worse by the lack of flood events in recent memory.

Storm surge is a flood risk in Perth, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Most storm-surge events there, are driven by sustained westerly gales caused by intense low-pressure systems and cold fronts during the cooler months. A strong westerly gale on 20 July 1910 caused damage along the west coast as far north as Geraldton. The Fremantle North Mole was damaged, while on the Swan River all the surrounding low-lying lands and many of the jetties were submerged. During a storm on 23 May 1994 the tidal elevation measured at Fremantle showed a storm surge of 0.98 metres. Fortunately the peak occurred at low tide.

When floods occur, they are generally spectacular: during the twentieth century they broke many records and caused much heartbreak.

Heavy rain fell over much of eastern Australia from October 1954 and on 23 February 1955 an intensifying monsoon depression moved south from Queensland. Torrential rain developed over the area of New South Wales covering the Macintyre, Gwydir, Namoi, Castlereagh, Macquarie and Bogan rivers, all tributaries of the Barwon-Darling. Rainfall totals exceeded 250 millimetres in twenty-four hours between Nevertire and Dunedoo 350 kilometres northwest of Sydney. Heavy rains then moved east across the Liverpool Ranges and down the Hunter Valley.

With such intense rain falling on already saturated ground from the unusually wet summer, the rivers reached unprecedented heights. More than 5000 homes were flooded, in some cases submerged, by up to five metres of muddy water. About 15,000 people were evacuated, some plucked from rooftops by boat or helicopter. The floodwaters destroyed thirty-one homes in Maitland; and more than a hundred others were so badly damaged that they had to be demolished. Eleven lives were lost, including four or five due to electrocution during rescue operations. In the Singleton region, about fifty kilometres away, another 1600 homes were flooded and three more people died.

The 1990 floods in southern Queensland, northern New South Wales and southeast Victoria inundated an area larger than Germany. On 23 April the Bogan River overtopped the levee protecting the town of Nyngan. Desperate attempts were made to raise the levee with sandbags. The bags were punched through by the weight of the water and virtually the whole town was inundated. Almost all the population of 2500 were evacuated by helicopter and bus to Dubbo, 160 kilometres away.

Even in South Australia, the driest state in the driest continent, floods have caused great distress. In Adelaide in 1923 heavy rain inundated parts of the city and caused serious damage to market gardens along the River Torrens. More recently, intense rainfall over the Adelaide area on 7 and 8 November 2005 led to major flooding in several streams, with extensive flash flooding in several suburbs.

Semi-arid Australia is not immune to flooding either. Broken Hill has been targeted at least twice, usually by intense thunderstorms causing flash flooding. In one day in 1992, storms produced around 100 millimetres of rain in isolated locations around the city. Four houses were hit by a metre-high wall of water and their occupants were evacuated. More than eighty homes and businesses were flooded. On 1 January 1998 a severe thunderstorm passed over Broken Hill early in the afternoon, producing heavy rain and localised flash flooding. More than 25 per cent of Broken Hill’s annual rainfall of 255 millimetres was dumped on the city in forty-five minutes. About fifty homes, shops and the fire station were flooded, with the State Emergency Services helping to cover rain-damaged roofs with tarpaulins and sandbag houses in low-lying areas.

The Red Centre is normally associated with drought, but Alice Springs has been flooded in the past. More than 300 millimetres of rain fell in the western MacDonnell Ranges in the twenty-four hours to 9am on 31 March 1988, with more than 150 millimetres at stations around Alice Springs. The normally dry Todd River burst its banks, flooding large areas of Alice Springs, killing three people and causing a lot of damage. That flood on the Todd was thought to be the second highest since Europeans settled there in the 1870s. Geological evidence suggested that the flooding in the region was the worst for about 850 years.

In January 1998 three people drowned as record floodwaters from ex-tropical cyclone Les swamped Katherine and inundated 1000 square kilometres. It was Katherine’s worst recorded flooding. The event also triggered a state of emergency among the indigenous communities and pastoral regions of the Daly River as the floodwaters moved downstream.

As most Australians know and remember, in January 2011 there appeared to be a disastrous series of violent floods affecting three states. After months of persistent rain in Queensland floods swept down the Condamine, Balonne, Mary, Burnett, Fitzroy, Herbert, Nogoa, Darling and Brisbane Rivers, inundating homes and businesses; almost thirty towns were declared disaster zones, with floodwaters covering almost 70 per cent of the state.

The Gascoyne River in Western Australia ‘blew up’ to record heights at about the same time, affecting hundreds of farmers and wiping some small communities off the map. About 30 per cent of rural Victoria, which had also seen a long period of heavy rainfall going back to the previous September, underwent flooding. And in southern New South Wales the Molonglo and Queanbeyan rivers flooded, as did the Murrumbidgee and Billabong Creek. There is occasionally a period of several months when there is repeated flooding over a wide area in a number of states, but of course statistics are no consolation when individual Australians have to come to terms with the devastation caused.

The impact of these floods is often devastating, both in economic terms and in their effect on communities.

The Federal Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics estimates that flooding in Australia between 1967 and 2005 cost the country an average of about $377 million per annum.

More locally, the cost of the June 2007 storm and flood in the Hunter Valley and the New South Wales central coast has been estimated at $1.3 billion, and 49 per cent of the home-related damage was not covered by insurance. And the Queensland Reconstruction Authority has estimated that the damage from floods in that state in 2010–2011 exceeded $5 billion. This flooding affected 478,000 homes, which underwent everything from simple loss of electrical power to total destruction. In the first four months after the floods insurance companies had paid out nearly $2 billion to Queensland home owners and businesses, and there was massive loss affecting the coal and agricultural sectors.

In Brisbane during the flood of 2010–2011, when the Brisbane River peaked at 4.46 metres on 13 January, sixty-seven suburbs were flooded to some extent and 1200 homes were completely submerged, with 9500 damaged. One thousand people were evacuated to relief centres and tens of thousands more fled to relatives and friends.

This was not the worst flood to affect the Brisbane River, however. In 1893, the river peaked at 8.3 metres and in 1841 at 8.4 metres. But in the nineteenth century, the water caused nothing like the same damage, simply because the population, and thus the value of homes and businesses, is so much greater now than it was then.

And even so, the events of 2010 and 2011 were not the most calamitous that have ever affected this part of Australia. Between 25 and 29 January 1974 near-record rainfall associated with tropical cyclone Wanda caused the greatest flooding ever suffered in an Australian capital city. One-third of the Brisbane metropolitan area, covering about forty suburbs, was inundated, forcing 9000 from their homes. During the floods fifty-six houses were swept away, with at least another 1600 damaged, while 6007 were flooded to some degree. Overall 13,000 buildings in Brisbane, Ipswich and other towns along the river were damaged or affected in some way; and many vehicles were damaged or destroyed. Thirteen people were drowned, while three others suffered fatal heart attacks.

Floods in the summer of 1998–1999 in Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales affected 83,500 people, including the 6710 who were temporarily left homeless. The Bureau of Meteorology reported that the floods resulted in fifteen deaths, with at least 169 injured. The total estimated cost was $990 million, of which only $184 million was covered by insurance. This is because insurance is not yet compulsory or even universally available in flood-prone areas.

Many people interviewed for this book said that the rise of floodwaters took them by surprise. But death in floods is hardly unknown in Australia’s European history. Lucinda Coates in 1996, presented an overview of fatalities from some natural hazards in Australia, at a conference on Natural Disaster Reduction on the Gold Coast, and reported: ‘Between 1788 and 1996 at least 2213 people were killed’. About a dozen places have recorded more than twenty deaths in a single episode of flooding, including in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley in January 2011.

‘Flash flooding’ is a hazard common to many parts of the country. In tropical areas 100 millimetres a day falls regularly, and low-lying areas around creeks and rivers are quickly flooded, with drains unable to handle the volume of water. Residents of northern Australia are readily able too cope with a few days or weeks of this, with grassy areas too sodden to walk on, pot plants and dog bowls constantly full of water — and lots of mosquitoes. Creeks and rivers rise and fall rapidly. The danger is that drivers will not heed the caution signs and so find themselves stranded in low-level crossings. This is not only a nuisance for local government and emergency agencies but a real danger to motorists.

For those not involved, and who get their information from media reports, flooding is alarming. Trees can fall across power lines, electricity goes off and driving becomes hazardous. And once water enters homes, its effects can be devastating. According to a report put out by Emergency Management Australia there are about 170,000 residential properties susceptible to severe flooding. EMA suggested that the total value of the assets at risk in Australia during the biggest floods ‘considerably exceeds $100 billion’. Flooding may therefore be Australia’s most damaging and costly natural hazard. And the costs rise as more and more people are affected, as we create further investment in housing and other land use on flood plains.

Having your home flooded unexpectedly can be terrifying. People interviewed for this book recall waking up to find themselves surrounded by floating furniture. The water movement inside homes in these cases is not usually dangerous in itself, but for the elderly and frail, as well as young children, the shock and temperature of the water can create serious problems.

Floodwater moves quickly and can float fridges, even cars and containers. These rogue objects then become battering rams, smashing into other items and breaking them. Donna Reynolds, a resident of Charleville, described hearing her house shake as the relentless debris–laden water pounded it.

The residual effects of the flooding are almost worse. The water brings with it mud, silt, slime and toxic waste. Few houses recover well from water lying in them for a period. Gyprock walls need to be torn down and thrown out, chipboard cupboards swell and rot, carpets soak up silt and waste and can rarely be salvaged. Water is trapped under lino, floorboards buckle, window–sills warp.

Yards are trashed. Vegetation lying under water for a prolonged period starts to rot and the stench from the mud is sickening. For many people who are already despairing that they cannot save their property and belongings, the smell becomes the trigger for an outpouring of grief and hopelessness.

And when the water recedes the problems remain. Rebuilding homes takes months at best, years at worst — and even longer if the owner is broke or has no insurance or an already chaotic lifestyle. Many people interviewed for this book did not return to their homes for more than a year.

A graphic description of what a flood means and what heartbreak it can cause, as well as how it can bring communities together, was written by Lyn Berlowitz. The first woman member of the Northern Territory Legislative Council (from 1960 to 1963), she and her husband Happy bought Bullita Station near Timber Creek, 650 kilometres southwest of Darwin, in 1965. They ran it profitably for a few years as a cattle property, but by the late 1970s the USA had banned Australian frozen beef exports and the bottom dropped out of the industry. The station was struggling to survive when in April 1977, the East Baines River flooded massively, with water rising fifteen metres in a matter of hours. Lyn was alone in the house. A few days later, she wrote to her sister describing what had happened:

Our trouble really started on Tuesday night of the 15 March. During the month of February which is usually our heavy monsoonal rain month, only 117 millimetres or nearly 5 inches of rain registered. Normally 20 to 24 inches falls, so we all concluded the ‘wet’ was to be a very dry one. The month of March to 15th (am) only 256 mm, or just over ten inches had registered, and no one was concerned.

Happy and the menfolk were away on their job about fifty miles from here and were not due home until Saturday night. On the 15th I went to bed about 8pm. (The insects are such a pest one can’t do anything at night.) It had rained on and off all day, but fairly lightly, and the river was at normal height.

About 2am I was wakened by a bit of a crash, and thinking it was a big frog hopping in the kitchen, I ignored the noise. Within ten minutes there was a big crash of glass so I grabbed my torch to investigate. Just in front of my elevated stove was a terrible mess of cornflakes, sugar and All Bran mixed in with broken jars. When I raised the torch higher to the mantelshelf over the stove I just about fainted, for there was the longest and fattest brown snake I had ever seen. Of course by this time the rain was falling heavily and steadily and a beaut electrical thunderstorm was right over the station (Bullita). Couldn’t put the generator on as it’s housed away from the cottage, and I would have got sopping wet, and also the lightning was playing all around the hills and might have struck the engine.

I went and got my Browning pistol. And holding the torch took aim, but missed the snake which slithered down from the shelf down under our dresser in the kitchen. Sent off a couple of more shots but as I was trembling so much I am never sure that I hit the beastly thing. There seemed to be quite a bit of blood oozing out so I was hoping it would bleed to death. Couldn’t bear to go back to bed knowing the snake was still alive so got a chair and holding the pistol sat and watched until daylight came and I could see what I was doing.

By this time the rain had really set in, so as soon as it was light enough to see, went out to look at the rain gauge and got quite a shock as it had evidently been raining over some considerable time, as there was quite a lake around the galvanised iron container [Bullita is a registered rainfall observer’s reporting station], and at 9am each morning we telegraph in the amount measured. I think the gauge holds about 10 inches of rain. Noting this I went to look at the river (East Baines) which is only 40-50 yards from the cottage. The river had risen and was running swiftly and had broken its banks on both sides, and was almost up to our windmill which stands 15 yards from the back door. Even then I didn’t panic as each year this has happened, but the water had not gone beyond the windmill.

I quickly went down and opened the doors to the fowl and duck pen which already had 12 inches of water through them. Our pet dog Princess has five week-old puppies which we used to bed down in our bathroom each night for fear of snakes. I grabbed a strong mail bag and put the puppies in but unfortunately the load was too heavy over my back, so took three out, intending to go back and get the others. Called the Royal Flying Doctor Service Base at Wyndham and reported the river was very high and that I was leaving for higher ground. I slung the mail bag and the two puppies over my shoulder and set off to wade up to the goat yard. I had on an old plastic raincoat of Happy’s and white ‘wet proof’ bowling hat and your brown desert boots for which later on I was very thankful.

The water was only to my knees in the breakaway ‘overflow’ from the river, and I was in no way concerned. Each year this area in front of the cottage needed to be negotiated when the river flooded and broke its banks.

I dumped the two puppies down in the goat yard and made their mother Princess stay with them and set off again back to the cottage which is about a short quarter mile away. I tried to follow the road but the rushing